


little bright flashes

by Mirror_Face



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: After death, Gen, Killing Game Was A Virtual Reality Simulation (Dangan Ronpa), Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Post-New Dangan Ronpa V3, Time Skips, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:01:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26413822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirror_Face/pseuds/Mirror_Face
Summary: he freezes, still feeling the fallen object brushing past his body. rantaro looks down.a shot put ball sits only one foot away from him.he can’t help but wonder if that’s the mastermind’s doing. is the near-miss an accident or a warning?rantaro’s breath hitches, and he stands up with shaky knees. he is alive.he is still in the middle something though- so he spins on his heel, faintly wondering if the secret door is still open. instead of the sight of the library, however, he’s met with a flash of blue from the corner of his eyes and pain spiking from the back of his head.rantaro dies on the stale, old library carpet, blood splattered on the bookshelves behind him.---In which Rantaro wakes up with a head-splitting headache and way too many empty spaces in his head.
Relationships: Akamatsu Kaede & Amami Rantaro
Comments: 1
Kudos: 26





	little bright flashes

( _ rantaro is in the library- loud music blaring in his ears through the speakers and screen that sits across the room. it wracks his nerves, but he has no choice but to ignore it. _

_ he makes it to the door. _

_ if rantaro’s right, then no one would end up dying tonight. his classmates (though he doesn’t know who they or himself even are, so that word is probably wrong) would be safe and so very not-dead. _

_ he opens the secret door, marveling at its existence for only a moment before he sees a camera flash. _

_ a trap? he wonders absentmindedly, as his feet take him to the bookshelf. he’s probably just wasting time, he has to find out what was behind that door, but he can’t just leave something suspicious behind. rantaro reaches for the camera. he just has to hurry up and- _

**_‘thump!’_ **

_ he freezes, still feeling the fallen object brushing past his body. rantaro looks down. _

_ a shot put ball sits only one foot away from him. _

_ he can’t help but wonder if that’s the mastermind’s doing. is the near-miss an accident or a warning? _

_ rantaro’s breath hitches, and he stands up with shaky knees. he is alive. _

_ he is still in the middle something though- so he spins on his heel, faintly wondering if the secret door is still open. instead of the sight of the library, however, he’s met with a flash of blue from the corner of his eyes and pain spiking from the back of his head. _

_ rantaro dies on the stale, old library carpet, blood splattered on the bookshelves behind him. _

_ the girl in blue grins (though a dead man wouldn’t know that). and there sits a shot put ball, bloody and pink- just a foot away from his head. _ )

* * *

Rantaro woke up with a head-splitting headache and way too many empty spaces in his head. He was stuck somewhere, in what seemed like a casket with an opaque glass roof.

He did nothing but gasp wildly for air, hands shaking for reasons he couldn’t exactly remember- a weight on his chest that was almost as heavy as a shot put ball ( _ -metal coated blood too close to his face- _ ). His hair stuck uselessly to his face, slick with sweat and pani and the exhilaration of death.

But he wasn’t dead, was he?

( _ -of course he was dead what about the cracking of his skull and the flashing of the camera of her smile- _ )

He blinked away the color blue, listening to the sounds of panicked footsteps and gathering voices. Getting louder and louder and closer.

_ “...first one…” _

_ “...ow’d she miss something like…” _

_ “...what a mistake…” _

_ “...fan… already…” _

_ “Get him out, now.” _

And the ceiling above him, a shadow protecting him from the light, opened in one arching swing. Rantaro blinked blearily at artificial brightness, letting people in black suits and red pins pull him up and out of the odd casket-thing. He tripped over thick, tangled wires, falling into a stranger’s arms.

He still gasped helplessly for air. His head still hurt like hell.

He was still ( _ -alive how is he alive didn’t he- _ ) very, very confused.

* * *

_ “How do you feel?”  _ A woman had asked a bit later, as he sat in Team Danganronpa’s ‘recovery room’. She was carrying a clipboard, though she didn’t have a pen or anything with her. There was a small tv in the high corner of the room, almost touching the ceiling.

It was on, a muted showing of the trial. Rantaro didn’t know if it was live or not- he didn’t know how much time had passed at all.

“Terrible.” He had responded, because his head was still pounding and the room felt like it was spinning. 

The woman chuckled like he was joking, and he couldn’t help but wonder if he really gave off that impression.

_ “Do you remember?”  _ She asked, impossibly cryptic.

Because there was so much for Rantaro to remember, wasn’t there? He knew that, from the brief explanation these strangers had given him and the flashes of  _ something _ that appeared and disappeared so spontaneously. He had three lives to remember- but which one was he meant to know?

So instead he just shook his head, watching as the woman tapped her nails on the back of the clipboard. Slow, monotonous.

In the tv, at the corner of the room- so separated from the conversation- he could see the panicked screams of the characters. Players. Contestants? (- _ classmates friends they were frie _ -) He couldn’t hear their voices though. The tv was still on mute.

The sound of the woman’s tapping nails brought his attention back to the questions. 

* * *

“ _ Kaede Akamatsu is awake and healthy. _ ” A man said, entering Rantaro’s room unannounced. 

Kaede ( _ -camera flashing it was a distraction heavy metal ball blue blue blue blue blue- _ ) Akamatsu?

“ _ Was she the one who killed me? _ ” He asked.

The man stiffend, before nodding- leaving immediately after.

That wasn’t right, he knew. She wasn’t there, Kaede Akamatsu. She didn’t do anything. It was all ( _ -blue blue blue blue flashes of camera blue the door the door the ball please- _ )...

He lost his train of thought.

Would Kaede even want to see him, he wondered. Or would it be too much stress.

He opted to wait, wanting his memories to catch up with him first.

* * *

In the end, Kaede approached him, only a day later. She wasn’t skittish like he had expected her to be, but her eyes were still alert with a specific type of adrenaline that only came when confronting the man that you murdered.

_ “Hey.” _ Rantaro had greeted, his breath shallow and his lips dry from thoughts of ( _ -metal ball bright thump! pain flashes- _ ) his death,  _ “So… you killed me, huh?” _

Kaede had stared at him, surprised, before she broke out into breathy laughing. She sat on the floor and whispered ‘oh god’ multiple times to herself, almost hysterical.

Rantaro wished he had the conviction to do that. A reason to sit on the floor and cry and wonder ‘is this my life now’. But any possible reason was muddled and blurred with the rest of his brain.

_ “Hi.” _ She had finally said back, settled down and trying her best to stay stolid. Her hands were shaking. His were too.  _ “Yeah, I… sorry.” _

He shrugged,  _ “I don’t really remember much anyways.” _

Her voice broke with humorless laughter,  _ “R-really? I don’t… should I be happy for you or not?” _

Rantaro chuckled, stumbling off of his chair and slinking down to the floor right in front of her,  _ “I don’t mind.” _

_ “I’m a bit jealous, then.” _ Her hand lingered near her throat, almost like she wanted to make sure nothing was wrapped around it, before putting it back in her lap. 

He also noticed how she avoided sitting on her knees.

That made sense, he thought. Rantaro was probably going to avoid the color blue for a long, long while.

It was always the little things…

( _ -flash of light flash of blue- _ )

* * *

_ “Do you…” _ Kaede paused, lowering her gaze to her fingers, which tapped nonsensically against her leg,  _ “don’t you feel that something’s wrong here?” _

Did he? Was there something wrong with the world he was in? There probably was- there was always something wrong in a world where Rantaro existed. Three lives, he reminded himself, what’s one more? 

_ “Maybe.”  _ Was all he’d said, brain scattered between so many different worlds. None of them were like the one he was in now.

( _ -empty life empty heart empty soul he needed danganronpa give him something to live fo- _ )

( _ -pleading for something freedom? life? please don’t leave them to die there- _ )

( _ -dead dead dead on the floor flash of blue flash of light numbing pain in his brain he just wanted to- _ )

She hummed next to him. It wasn’t an actual song, more like a jumble of many others. Classical turned blues turned jazz- backtrack, move forward, repeat, move forward again. There wasn’t a pattern. Just confused.

_ “That makes sense.” _ She said,  _ “I can’t tell what’s wrong either. It’s just not exactly right either. _ ”

And they sat in silence for a while, oddly comfortable. It was weird to think that she had killed him just a week ago. It was so ridiculous- talking to his killer like there was no history, no resentment. And, weirdly enough, there wasn’t any.

In the world he was in right now, there was nothing but white walls, hazy thoughts, and the absent void that was his head. There was nothing there- nothing could be held in a head that was already too full with junk. Resentment didn’t belong there.

Or, maybe, that was just a roundabout way of saying that Rantaro Amami wasn’t made for resentment. Although, he wasn’t exactly sure which one.

( _ -let him live let him into danganronpa- _ )

( _ -let him live let him save them- _ )

( _ -let him live let him just go a little farther live a little longer- _ )

  
  


Somewhere in the room was a tv, muted and in the high corner, where thirteen more students fought for their lives. One more dead.

Rantaro didn’t want to look.

( _ -he could’ve helped if only he’d been allowed to live- _ )

Everything was quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little something that I wrote inbetween the planned stuff. I just really wanted to write post game.


End file.
